30 kgs for the summer

Starting today my journey - this journey because I’ve been trying to lose weight my whole life. Starting weight: 91kg. I’m a 6’4 female and I am in my early 30s. It’s not gonna be easy, but that’s close to the heaviest I’ve been and I’ve lost weight before.

My goal is to lose 30kg in the next 5 months. I know it sounds like a lot, but that’s 6kg/month and I feel is doable. Unlike other people, big goals are a huge motivator for me.

I will be posting my progress daily both here and on my feed. Please feel free to add me as a fried if you want to join me in this journey l. Let’s motivate each other!

Replies

It sounds like a lot because it is a lot. Way too aggressive, way too restrictive. If you actually managed to stick to it, you have a high risk of nutritional deficiencies (resulting in things like thinning hair, brittle nails, and dull skin), fatigue, loss of muscle mass in addition to the fat (your heart is a muscle, so add organ damage), mood swings, and a lot of other unpleasant things. More likely, hunger will get the better of you, and you'll end up massively overeating, then either fall off the wagon completely, or end up in a binge/restrict cycle.

Is your height a typo? I sincerely hope so, because if not, you'd also be very underweight at 61kg.

Hi
I have been trying all my life to lose some weight and have done quite well but now find i am slowly putting it back on. I started off at 120kgs and managed to get down to 85kgs and then kind of thought i did well and started letting go a bit and now am back up to 103.8kgs.
I am off to the UK in August and really want to be thinner before i go.
I am not a superstar when it comes to technology so don't really know if this message will even go thru - dunno what a feed is and how to get on or follow but i think i know enough to kind of see responses.
Good luck with your journey - I am gonna also make notes of my progress
Take care

I appreciate your concern, however for me losing 1 to 1,5kg/week is not a stretch when you are 30kg overweight and relatively young. Don’t worry, I’m planning on losing weight the healthy way this time around. I’m not on any restrictive diet like low carb, keto, etc. I’ve done those before, lost loads of weight and put all back and more once the diet was over.

I’ll be eating carbs, protein, veggies, fat, sugar, everything. I am focusing on calories intake and exercise. If I don’t lose 30kg until July it’s completely fine. As long as I keep on losing weight.

Small goals don’t work for me, because I feel I don’t work as hard and I relax once I achieve them. So that’s why I’ve decided to try big this time. And I won’t stop until I’ve reached my goal.

I have no intention of starving myself and please anyone reading this, don’t do that. I’m not putting pressure on myself and you shouldn’t either. Again, after loads of trials and erros, that’s me trying to be successful this time around, taking on board what I’ve learnt. However if big goals make you anxious, try baby steps instead. We’re all different and what works for me might not work for you and vice versa.

I’ve decided to post here as this might motivate someone else and also to motivate myself on the days I’m feeling down (we know these will come). I feel that reading this would help take me back to a positive mindset.

Please feel free to share your experiences as well, your strategies, your achievements and your failures. There’s no perfect journey and we should just try to do our best and keep ourselves accountable when we don’t.

I am planning on eating around 1500 calories/day and burning 400 to 500 calories working out (jumping on a mini trampoline, cycling and practicing yoga).

Way too aggressive. You will be losing lean body mass as well as fat. You should be eating about 1400 calories per day AND all of the exercise calories you burn so, with your info, you should be eating close to 1800.

OP, please know that no one is trying to discourage you, we just want you to avoid the traps we've all fallen into and do it right once and for all. Check out these posts when you get a chance, many of us learned so much from them!

I appreciate your concern, however for me losing 1 to 1,5kg/week is not a stretch when you are 30kg overweight and relatively young. Don’t worry, I’m planning on losing weight the healthy way this time around. I’m not on any restrictive diet like low carb, keto, etc. I’ve done those before, lost loads of weight and put all back and more once the diet was over.

I’ll be eating carbs, protein, veggies, fat, sugar, everything. I am focusing on calories intake and exercise. If I don’t lose 30kg until July it’s completely fine. As long as I keep on losing weight.

Small goals don’t work for me, because I feel I don’t work as hard and I relax once I achieve them. So that’s why I’ve decided to try big this time. And I won’t stop until I’ve reached my goal.

I have no intention of starving myself and please anyone reading this, don’t do that. I’m not putting pressure on myself and you shouldn’t either. Again, after loads of trials and erros, that’s me trying to be successful this time around, taking on board what I’ve learnt. However if big goals make you anxious, try baby steps instead. We’re all different and what works for me might not work for you and vice versa.

I’ve decided to post here as this might motivate someone else and also to motivate myself on the days I’m feeling down (we know these will come). I feel that reading this would help take me back to a positive mindset.

Please feel free to share your experiences as well, your strategies, your achievements and your failures. There’s no perfect journey and we should just try to do our best and keep ourselves accountable when we don’t.

Have a nice day everyone! I will be back later

Well that only comes across a little condescending.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say I know a fair bit more about healthy weight loss than you do, and you are setting yourself up for a fall. Your calorie goal is what is restrictive.

And FYI, I started with nearly 30 kg to lose too. Age is not the factor you seem to think it is. Perhaps you've done short bursts of losing 1.5 kg a week and that's why you think it's fine and sustainable. It's not. It's only an acceptable rate of lose for those who are morbidly obese and under a doctor's supervision, because their weight itself is more of a health risk than a period of rapid lose to get it down more quickly.

At your current weight, you could lose at 2 lb (~1 kg) a week for a short time, like a month, then dropping to 1.5 lb (~700g), then 1, as your weight lowers.

I’ve lost 24kg before, I’m not new to this. I put back on 5 years later due to emotional issues - left my country for my master’s, fell in love and had to decide between stay with my now husband or go back home to an unhealthy mother. Chose the husband, felt guilty and depressed and fell on the food trap again.

For the past 2 years, I’ve been dieting on and off and my lowest weight was 76kg, my heaviest 95,5kg. I’ve done keto, low carb, and everything else that was trending.

This time I decided to lose weight how I did the first time: eating healthy and exercising. Let’s wait see how it goes. I’ll do me and if I fail, I’ll try something else. I’m not afraid of failure and I learn from my mistakes.

Now, you calling me condescending from the top of your high horse is quite ironic.

I’ve lost 24kg before, I’m not new to this. I put back on 5 years later due to emotional issues - left my country for my master’s, fell in love and had to decide between stay with my now husband or go back home to an unhealthy mother. Chose the husband, felt guilty and depressed and fell on the food trap again.

For the past 2 years, I’ve been dieting on and off and my lowest weight was 76kg, my heaviest 95,5kg. I’ve done keto, low carb, and everything else that was trending.

This time I decided to lose weight how I did the first time: eating healthy and exercising. Let’s wait see how it goes. I’ll do me and if I fail, I’ll try something else. I’m not afraid of failure and I learn from my mistakes.

Now, you calling me condescending from the top of your high horse is quite ironic.

You have not had success because you are not losing in a sustainable way. Success is NOT losing weight, success is keeping lost weight off.

Your definition of success is not everyone’s. You are talking down on so many people right now trying their best and struggling... Seriously, guys... I really appreciate your concern, but you don’t have a monopoly on truth.

I’ve lost 24kg before, I’m not new to this. I put back on 5 years later due to emotional issues - left my country for my master’s, fell in love and had to decide between stay with my now husband or go back home to an unhealthy mother. Chose the husband, felt guilty and depressed and fell on the food trap again.

For the past 2 years, I’ve been dieting on and off and my lowest weight was 76kg, my heaviest 95,5kg. I’ve done keto, low carb, and everything else that was trending.

This time I decided to lose weight how I did the first time: eating healthy and exercising. Let’s wait see how it goes. I’ll do me and if I fail, I’ll try something else. I’m not afraid of failure and I learn from my mistakes.

Now, you calling me condescending from the top of your high horse is quite ironic.

Stop and take a critical look at what you just wrote here. You've been yo-yoing for a long time. That means your first weight loss was a failure--you couldn't keep it off. The people trying to convince you to slow down and do it right this time have experience and are veteran posters. Doing it as they say gives you a better shot at keeping the weight off long term. Your deficit is too aggressive and bad things happen. We've seen many posts from people with hair loss, dizziness, emergency room visits, .... the list is long. I'd like to see you avoid those pitfalls.

I was a fat child and teeneger. When I was 19 yo, I lost 24kg and kept it off for 5 years. During 5 years, my weight fluctuated between 58kg and 61kg. Then, I had a difficult time and my weight jumped to 95kg in 2 years. Since then, I’ve lost 20kg with low carb, then put 10kg back on, then tried several diets with more or less success. Then decided not do anything. Yesterday, I felt I was ready to lose weight again. I weighed myself and got very upset when I realised that I was almost back on 95kg. I decided I would stop with trendy diets and do what I did back when I was 19: eat healthy and exercise. I set myself I big goal as I know how my mind works better than any of you. I stated that I will not starve myself and I used terms like “around”. I said I realise that 30kg sounds like too much, and that I won’t beat myself if I can’t do it. I really don’t think I’m doing anything crazy that will bring me to an emergency room and to be honest I think you’re really overreacting because you’re caught up on what is right for you. But you’re not me, and you don’t know me. I also have lost weight before, I also have been to doctors, I also have read loads about diets and healthy lifestyles. Again, I appreciate your concern but I would appreciate even more if you’d realise that there’s more than one way to verb a noun (cat lover here).

By the way, veteran posters might have a difficult time in life and put weight back on too. Noboy is exempt.

The people responding to you are doing it out of genuine concern, both from personal experience, and from what we see in these forums. Eating healthily and exercising is great! But part of eating healthily is getting enough calories to support your day to day activities and exercise. Thinking you will be exempt from the negative effects of rapid weight loss does not make it so. Maybe, if you're lucky. The thing is, those things - fatigue, nutritional deficiencies, etc - can take a while to show up, and when they do, it's not a simple case of just increasing your calorie intake and everything will go back to normal right away. It takes time. @AnnPT77 may pop in and share her story, of not even deliberately aiming for aggressive loss, but being an outlier in terms of how many calories she burns compared to average, and the physical effects that had on her from losing too fast, even though she course corrected as soon as she realised. There are loads of others. Including one member who ended up in congestive heart failure because of her aggressive approach (yes, that is an extreme case, but it does happen).

This also isn't about any sort of jealousy that you can sustain a high deficit and we can't. Believe me, I know all about rapid weight loss. It's not a case of can you do it, it's should you do it.

You're quite right that no one is exempt from life throwing them a curveball and regaining weight. I developed a chronic health condition two years ago, and as a consequence (of overeating for my much reduced activity level, and plain not caring) I've stacked on that nearly 30 kg I mentioned in a previous reply. Do I wish I could drop the weight faster than the year it's going to take me? Hell yeah! But I'm not willing to sacrifice my existing muscle mass, nor compromise my already tenuous health, in order to do it (even without the health condition, I wouldn't do it). I'd like to have decent body composition at the end of this long road, for a start. So I set my rate of loss in accordance with that graphic I posted upthread, and I diligently eat my allotted calories. Because that's what healthy weight loss looks like.

The people responding to you are doing it out of genuine concern, both from personal experience, and from what we see in these forums. Eating healthily and exercising is great! But part of eating healthily is getting enough calories to support your day to day activities and exercise. Thinking you will be exempt from the negative effects of rapid weight loss does not make it so. Maybe, if you're lucky. The thing is, those things - fatigue, nutritional deficiencies, etc - can take a while to show up, and when they do, it's not a simple case of just increasing your calorie intake and everything will go back to normal right away. It takes time. @AnnPT77 may pop in and share her story, of not even deliberately aiming for aggressive loss, but being an outlier in terms of how many calories she burns compared to average, and the physical effects that had on her from losing to fast, even though she course corrected as soon as she realised. There are loads of others. Including one member who ended up in congestive heart failure because of her aggressive approach (yes, that is an extreme case, but it does happen).

This also isn't about any sort of jealousy that you can sustain a high deficit and we can't. Believe me, I know all about rapid weight loss. It's not a case of can you do it, it's should you do it.

You're quite right that no one is exempt from life throwing them a curveball and regaining weight. I developed a chronic health condition two years ago, and as a consequence (of overeating for my much reduced activity level, and plain not caring) I've stacked on that nearly 30 kg I mentioned in a previous reply. Do I wish I could drop the weight faster than the year it's going to take me? Hell yeah! But I'm not willing to sacrifice my existing muscle mass, nor compromise my already tenuous health, in order to do it (even without the health condition, I wouldn't do it). I'd like to have decent body composition at the end of this long road, for a start. So I set my rate of loss in accordance with that graphic I posted upthread, and I diligently eat my allotted calories. Because that's what healthy weight loss looks like.

That's true: I don't have a lot to add to it.

I accidentally lost weight too fast at first, around 2 pounds a week when I joined MFP at around the mid-150s pounds (already down a good way from a class 1 obese body weight), because MFP guesses my calorie needs around 25-30% low. I just felt fine, not hungry . . . until, suddenly I didn't.

I got weak and fatigued. It took several weeks to recover normal strength and energy level. I wouldn't wish that for anyone else, so I encourage others not to lose too fast, so they can avoid it. I was lucky that there weren't worse consequences, I figure.

Will bad things happen to everyone who loses fast? Of course not. It's a question of how much risk a person wants to tolerate, or how lucky they feel.

I'd also add that I've seen quite a few people in the multi-year maintainer category say that they had yo-yo-ed repeatedly in the past, and that slow loss was the thing that finally worked - treating the loss as a gradual, manageable learning process about how to eat in a happy way that put and kept them at a healthy weight long term.

I felt that way myself, once I got things on a course of sensible loss rate, then tapered that even slower as I got nearer goal weight. I can't guarantee it'll work forever, but 2020 will start year 5 of quite successful maintenance for me, at about your height, OP - 5'5", in my case - and around 61kg, after literally decades of obesity.

I can't tell you what to do, OP; I'm just telling you what I've experienced myself, and observed in others here.